With lackluster components and a too-high price, the HP G42-415DX is laptop ultimately not much more than just a pretty face.

There's only so much you can expect from budget laptops. Even so, the HP G42-415DX, priced at $529.99 at Best Buy, is pushing it. Like many of HP's portable PCs, it has a fine look and all the basic amenities you'll need. But other laptops offer performance that's as good or even slightly better, while costing a fair amount less. Unless you're really devoted to HP-branded laptops, you can do better than the G42-415DX.

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Design
If perhaps a bit subdued, the G42-415DX's design is nonetheless appealing. Bearing a stem-to-stern tarnished-silver color, it captures light without blinding reflectivity; the textured HP Imprint finish, a triangular pattern across the lid and inside (there's not even a break on the touchpad), accentuates details with subtle grace. (The pattern is preloaded onto the system's desktop wallpaper as well, which is a nice touch.) The 14-inch display's bezel and the standard keyboard are both black; the former is glossy and the latter matte, rounding out the laptop's overall impression of quiet elegance. At only about 4.7 pounds, it's also one of the lighter low-cost laptops on the market, weighing less even than the 5-pound Gateway NV50A02u (4 stars, $449.99 list).

Features
Most budget laptops offer but a simple selection of components, and that's certainly the case with the G42-415DX. Its AMD Athlon II X2 P340 CPU clocks in at only 2.2 GHz, and is accompanied by an about-average amount of RAM: 3GB. The hard drive, too, is nothing special at 320GB; some models that cost less, such as the Gateway NV50A02u, offer even more storage space (in that case, 500GB). Of course, you'll also have to contend with integrated video: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250. A webcam and microphone are located along the top bezel of the crisp, 1,366-by-768-resolution widescreen display.

Perhaps the closest thing to an elaborate feature on the G42-415DX is its HDMI output port, which can be found on the laptop's edge; joining it there are a VGA out, Ethernet jack (complementing the integrated 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi), two USB 2.0 ports, headphone and microphone jacks, and a multiformat card reader. On the machine's right edge are the DVD burner, another USB 2.0 port, and the port for connecting the power cord.

Performance
To be clear, we don't anticipate that any budget laptop is going to deliver truly barn-burning performance. But we do expect its capabilities to be more or less in line with its price, something that is not the case with the G42-415DX. Its results in our suite of benchmark tests were equivalent to or below those we saw from the Gateway NV50A02u, which costs $80 less, and even the Dell Inspiron IM5030-874B3D (3 stars, $429.99 direct), which costs $100 less.

In some cases, the differences were minor, as with our CineBench R11.5 rendering test (1.77 for the Gateway, 1.22 for the Dell, 1.16 for the HP) or the PCMark Vantage full-system appraisal (4,455 for the Gateway, 3,505 for the Dell, 3,503 for the HP). In Photoshop, the deficit was slightly more pronounced: The HP came in the middle (just barely), needing 9 minutes and 21 seconds to finish our Photoshop CS5 trial applying a dozen filters and effects to an image, with the Gateway taking 9 minutes and 24 seconds to finish, but the Dell requiring only 8 minutes and 13 seconds.

The Dell also slightly edged out the HP in terms of gaming (at 1,024 by 768, with medium details enabled)8.1 frames per second (fps) versus 8 frames per second in Lost Planet 2; 10.1 fps versus 9.2 fps in Crysisbut both are fundamentally unplayable at those frame rates. (The Gateway, earning 8.7 in Lost Planet 2, is not appreciably better.) If 3D gaming interests you at all, you'll need to drop a few more dollars for a system with discrete graphics.

The G42-415DX only proved demonstrably superior to the IM5030-874B3D in one area: battery life. Whereas the Dell could only manage 3 hours and 12 minutes, the HP with its six-cell, 47 Wh battery held out for a full 3 and 31 secondsnot terrific, but better. Again, however, the Gateway NV50A02u delivers more juice for its lower price: 3 hours and 50 minutes.

Either the Gateway NV50A02u or the Dell Inspiron IM5030-874B3D would make a better cost-saving computer choice than the HP G42-415DX; and if you want something with considerably more power (and better battery life), our Editors' Choice, the Acer Aspire AS5742-6475 ($599.99 list, 4 dots), will run you only $70 more than the HP. You may have to sacrifice some design elements for the increased potential, but it might be worth it as they're about all that give the G42-415DX any discernible distinction.

Matthew Murray got his humble start leading a technology-sensitive life in elementary school, where he struggled to satisfy his ravenous hunger for computers, computer games, and writing book reports in Integer BASIC. He earned his B.A. in Dramatic Writing at Western Washington University, where he also minored in Web design and German. He has been building computers for himself and others for more than 20 years, and he spent several years working in IT and helpdesk capacities before escaping into the far more exciting world...
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